President Nicolas Sarkozy of France participates in a military remembrance ceremony in Paris, June 6, 2011

France on Friday warned that it may accelerate the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan after four unarmed French servicemen were shot and fifteen others wounded in a killing spree by an Afghan soldier in the northeastern Kapisa Province.

President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the immediate suspension of training and joint combat operations with Afghan forces. “The French army stands alongside its allies but we cannot accept that a single one of our soldiers be wounded or killed by our allies,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.”

NATO played down the threat. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the organization’s secretary general, insisted that attacks by Afghan forces are rare. “Such tragic incidents are terrible and grab headlines but they are isolated,” he said before pointing out that there are some 130,000 foreign soldiers serving alongside three hundred thousand Afghans.

France’s participation in the NATO mission in Afghanistan is unpopular. Sarkozy’s two main challengers for the presidency this year, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande and Marine Le Pen of the far right and isolationist Front nationale, have each promised to bring the roughly four thousand Frenchmen who serve in Afghanistan home. Elections in France are scheduled for April and May.

The president on Friday said that he would dispatch his defense minister to Afghanistan to investigate the shooting. He added that if Afghan authorities cannot ensure the safety of French troops, “the question of an early withdrawal of the French army would arise.”

Afghanistan’s defense ministry said the attacker had been arrested and was being questioned. President Hamid Karzai is due to visit Paris next week.

French troops in Afghanistan concentrate on training local security forces which includes accompanying them on patrols. The force is set to be reduced to three thousand this year before NATO hands over security responsibility to the Afghans in 2014.

The latest deaths brought to number of French soldiers killed in Afghanistan since deployment to eighty-two.

Texas governor and Republican Party presidential hopeful Rick Perry participates in a Fox News debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, January 16

Texas governor Rick Perry, a Republican Party presidential candidate, said Monday night that Turkey is ruled “by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists” and he questioned whether it should remain a member of NATO.

Perry was participating in a Fox News debate of Republican Party presidential hopefuls in South Carolina which will vote this Saturday to elect an opposition candidate to run against Barack Obama in the general election in November.

The Texan observed that Turkey was moving “far away” from the country that he lived in during the 1970s when he was stationed in Turkey as a United States Air Force pilot. Turkey at the time was under an unstable secular government that was overthrown by the military in a 1980 coup. Nevertheless, it “was our ally,” said Perry. “Today, we don’t see that.”

The current conservative government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan conducts a more independent foreign policy and has sought to infuse Islamic values in a nation that is overwhelmingly religious but seen aggressive attempts at secularization under both civilian and army regimes for much of its republican history.

Erdoğan has severed ties with Israel in favor of a policy that is more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, including Hamas’ which the United States regard as a terrorist organization. He tried to negotiate a nuclear fuel exchange agreement with Tehran in 2010 over Western objections but also agreed late last year to host an early warning radar system for NATO’s European missile shield despite Iranian pressure and threats.

Recently, the government in Ankara has distanced itself from Damascus after fostering trade relations with the Ba’athist regime there in previous years. President Abdullah Gül said that he had “lost confidence” in his Syrian counterpart in August of last year and Turkey has refused to close its border with Syria for refugees seeking to escape the brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.

American-Turkish relations have been complicated by Turkey’s assertiveness. Where it used to be staunchly pro-American and considered itself Western, Erdoğan and his Islamist party have realigned their country to become a power in region again. The move has not been without suspicion—from the United States as well as opposition parties within Turkey which fear an Islamization of society.

If Turkey is to be a regional player, it cannot be perceived as an American puppet regime. Nor can it maintain cordial relations with the Jewish state if it is to present itself as an alternative to either theocracy or secular dictatorship.

Especially in the wake of the “Arab spring,” which forced authoritarian, secular and often pro-Western governments out of power, Turkey’s blend of democracy and Islamism may be a model for revolutionaries in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria where the majority of people are conservative and Muslim and antisemitism is rife. It is why Ankara has distanced itself from the depots it was so willing to do business with just a few short years ago in the name of “zero problems with neighbors” and embraced the new order in the Middle East—one it hopes to lead.

This could be an opportunity for the United States to exert influence through Turkey on nations that are generally anti-American except for their (military) establishments that have for decades conducted a foreign policy that lacked popular support.

Perry evidently didn’t see such an opportunity. He said he wanted to “send a powerful message to countries like Iran and Syria and Turkey that the United States is serious.”

Grouping Turkey, a NATO ally for sixty years, with overtly anti-American regimes like Iran and Syria would constitute a major shift in America’s strategy and possibly undermine its foreign policy across the Middle East if it is seen as mistaking conservative Islam for extremism.

A foreign policy advisor to Rick Perry’s campaign elaborated on the governor’s comments to an ABC News journalist after the debate, explaining that it was the Turkish Government’s association with Hamas that prompted his use of the word “terrorists.” She added that as president, Perry “would welcome the opportunity to work with Turkey on regional issues like Syria or Iraq.”

A C-130 Hercules transport aircraft lands at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, July 7, 2011 (Timm Ziegenthaler)

The new defense strategy that was unveiled by President Barack Obama last week emphasizes a strong American military presence in the Pacific at the expense of the Atlantic realm. Although the document underscores the United States’ “enduring interests” in Europe, it also suggests that the force posture there must “evolve” in recognition of a strategic shift to East Asia.

“Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it,” the new strategy says. With military budgets under pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, that’s a doubtful assertion at best.

Besides the United States, only four NATO members spend more than 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense as is required by treaty—Albania, France, Greece and the United Kingdom. America’s share of total NATO spending has only risen since the end of the Cold War, from roughly 50 percent before the Soviet Union collapsed to more than 75 percent today.

In fairness, the United States are largely to blame for the growing divergence. Whereas European countries have modestly reduced their defense outlays relative to GDP in the last twenty years, America’s military budget exploded after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, from $291 billion ten years ago to roughly $700 billion today, in order to fight the War on Terror.

As American troops have pulled out of Iraq and prepare to draw down in Afghanistan, defense spending will be subject to austerity, increasing by nearly $500 billion less than was previously planned for over the next ten years.

Army and Marine Corps will be cut and lose forces while procurement projects, possibly including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, could be subject to reductions. That, in turn, could prompt other participating nations, including Italy and the Netherlands, to reduce their own F-35 orders. In both countries, political opposition to buying the fighter plane is substantial.

An army brigade will likely be withdrawn from Europe. Defense secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday wouldn’t give further details. Rather, he seemed to suggest that nothing actually will change. “Not only are we going to continue our commitments there,” he pledged, “but we are going to maintain the kind of innovative presence there that we think will make clear to Europe, and those to those who have been our strong allies in the past, that we remain committed.”

His predecessor, Robert Gates, was more critical. In the wake of the Libyan intervention, he warned European allies that, “The kind of emotional and historical attachment” to NATO that survived the end of the Cold War “is aging out.”

Gates said last year that future American leaders, “those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me—may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”

As long as the United States far outspend European nations in defense and maintain an extended and permanent military presence on the continent, there is little incentive for NATO partners there to enhance their own defenses. There may be a “dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress,” as Gates put it, to continue to make up for Europe’s lack of an independent defense capacity; if Panetta believes that he has to “make clear” to Europe that he is “committed” to its security nonetheless, there won’t be any change.

Four US Navy F/A-18 Hornet aircraft fly over mountains in Afghanistan, November 25, 2010 (US Air Force)

Three weeks ago, twenty-four Pakistani soldiers dug in trenches along the Afghan-Pakistani border were accidentally killed by NATO aircraft during one of the many counterinsurgency missions that American and Afghan troops have undertaken over the past year. Except on this particular nighttime raid, the precision and professionalism that have become hallmarks of the coalition’s military campaign in Afghanistan were lost, tragically ending the lives of over two dozen men.

The Pakistani military and government, which have had a frosty relationship with the United States for most of the year, responded angrily. The Pakistani Embassy in Washington went so far as to tell reporters that the NATO operation was a deliberate act aimed at loosening the morale of the Muslim nation—a viewpoint that, while conspiratorial, may be acceptable given Islamabad’s roller coasty partnership with the Americans.

Sensing that another fallout in American-Pakistan relations would hurt the NATO war effort in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense called their Pakistani counterparts and told them that a transparent and factually based investigation would be implemented. That Pentagon study is now out and to the consternation of Western military officials, it looks like the Pakistanis may not have been wrong in all of their assertions.

Although the final report has not been made public, the Defense Department released a press statement briefly touching upon its most important findings. In sum, the investigation concluded that NATO was perfectly within its right to return fire in self defense but the coordinates that were given to Pakistani soldiers in the area turned out to be wrong.

The investigating officer found that US forces, given what information they had available to them at the time, acted in self defense and with appropriate force after being fired upon. Nevertheless, inadequate coordination by US and Pakistani military officers operating through the border coordination center—including our reliance on incorrect mapping information shared with the Pakistani liaison officer—resulted in a misunderstanding about the true location of Pakistani military units.

The study is not a perfect inquiry. Out of protest, the Pakistani military refused to cooperate with the Pentagon’s investigation, which lead investigator Brigadier General Stephen Clark acknowledged was a significant setback in uncovering all of the facts.

The findings are certain to draw condemnation from the Pakistanis who continue to feel insulted by what they view as Washington’s lack of appreciation for the thousands of military and civilian casualties that they have suffered in the fight against terrorism since 2001. General Athar Abbas, the chief Pakistani military spokesman, quickly indicated that his colleagues rejected the report’s conclusions.

The completion of the inquiry leaves the Obama Administration with a difficult decision to make. Does the president “swallow American pride” and formally apologize for NATO’s part of the responsibility or will he continue to express regret over the incident without offering that apology?

At least for the time being, the White House and the State Department have not budged from their original position. A State Department spokesman attempted to take responsibility for NATO’s infractions at a press briefing after the report’s release, all the while punting questions on apologizing.

Now that US/NATO forces are indeed held liable for at least part of the border incident, the administration should in fact reverse its previous stance, privately and publicly making it clear that anyone on the American side who was part of the problem will be dealt with accordingly.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been on the phone for weeks with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, trying to rebuild a tattered relationship. Kayani has reestablished contacts with NATO commander General John R. Allen, a good start to making sure that a deadly accident like the one that occurred on November 24 does not happen again. But neglecting to say “I’m sorry,” even as the Pentagon investigation details that NATO did in fact make mistakes, will give the Pakistanis a greater reason to doubt the United States as committed partners in the region.

The reality is that as long as the United States are engaged with tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan, Washington needs Pakistan’s help—whether or not Pakistan has been truly forthcoming in battling militancy on its own soil. Absent cordial relations between the two countries, NATO commanders can expect Islamabad to continue closing down supply routes that go into Afghanistan—forcing the coalition to either spent millions more airlifting supplies or putting them increasingly into the pockets of Central Asia’s autocratic regimes.

Pakistan may be a double faced partner right now but imagine how much worse NATO’s experience in Afghanistan would be without a measurable level of Pakistani complicity. Sometimes in war, a nation does not get to choose its allies. Pakistan is one such nation—a pain to deal with but necessary for a smooth NATO conclusion to the war across the border.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany during an Afghan security conference in Bonn, December 5 (AFP)

December 5, 2011 may have been just an ordinary day for most of the world but for Hamid Karzai and his government in Kabul, it represented a day of international solidarity for his country’s fate. 

After quick successes by the United States and heir coalition allies against Al Qaeda and Taliban bases, the war in Afghanistan has grinded on for a decade. Afghans of all ethnicities and tribes have suffered immeasurably at the hands of all sides involved in the conflict. Suicide bombings, unheard of in Afghanistan prior to 2001, are now a facet of everyday life. 

The insurgents have even targeted Kabul, a city that was once relatively insulated from violence in the rest of Afghanistan, with ever more ferocity. The latest suicide attack in the capital striking at the heart of Shī’ah commemorations killed close to sixty innocent people.

It’s not all bad however. Death and destruction may have defined the war effort so far but the Afghan Government, the Afghan people and the world are clearly hoping that the future brings more hope. In Bonn, Germany, representatives of a hundred countries and organizations converged to talk about where Afghanistan is headed and what the international community can do to make the lives of Afghans a little less violent and a little more prosperous.

President Hamid Karzai was the keynote speaker during the conference and praised Europe, the United States and the rest of his partners for the immense sacrifices that they have made for the benefit of the Afghan people. For American delegates sitting in on the meeting, Karzai’s remarks, which tend to change as fast as events on the battlefield, were noteworthy in their sincerity and appreciation.

Together, we have spent blood and treasure in fighting terrorism. Your continued solidarity, your commitment and support will be crucial so that we can consolidate our gains and continue to address the challenges that remain.

Challenges there are. Economic growth in Afghanistan has been at a standstill in the countryside where most Afghans live due to the dangerous security situation on the ground.

The government of Hamid Karzai is so reliant on foreign aid that his authority would quickly collapse if the billions of dollars in international spending were to be cut even marginally. As of 2010, the United States alone had donated at least $52 billion to the Afghan Government for a variety of tasks, most related to security but others related to reconstruction programs and reconciliation activities.

Yet even that amount has not solved Afghanistan’s problems. The financial constraints on Karzai are so severe that he asked global contributors for an additional $15 billion for 2015 at the Bonn Conference—a pledge that Washington and its allies have nominally supported if the Afghans continue to progress on the political reform front.

Where does this conference leave the United States and their NATO partners at the moment? Right now, the military mission in Afghanistan continues on its present course. NATO soldiers, with embedded Afghan units, are scheduled to take the fight to the enemy in the caverns of eastern Afghanistan, the home base of the Haqqani network and an area that will be extremely difficult to pacify without political dedication from NATO countries and an aggressive counterterrorism approach that will result in at least some casualties.

Unfortunately, even with these force enablers in mind, it stretches credulity to expect these operations to do anything but temporarily dent the insurgency—especially without cooperation from Pakistan, who did not even participate in the Bonn Conference. 

The training of Afghan security personnel will undoubtedly accelerate as Afghanistan’s own army only has a short three years to get its act together before NATO draws down and leaves the nation’s security where it belongs—in the hands of the Afghan people.

Regrettably, the geopolitical aspect of the equation—which must include regional acceptance of Afghanistan as a sovereign and independent state, without interference from its neighbors—and reintegration with the Taliban is a dim prospect. In the end, what the Afghan people do not need is more war, but a political settlement that is acceptable to all of the major players in the country.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen meets Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey in Istanbul, July 15

Turkey agreed this month to host a radar system in its southeast that will be part of NATO’s missile defense system despite strong local protest against what is perceived as a concession to the United States.

The defense system aims to counter ballistic missile threats from Iran, a neighbor of Turkey’s that has predicated a deterioration in bilateral relations and regional stability if Ankara were to station the early warning radar on its soil.

The Turkish Government insists that the shield isn’t targeted at any particular country.

Russia previously objected to the construction of the system, interceptors of which are built in Poland and Romania. Turkey is pivotal to the watered down version of the shield that was first proposed by the Bush Administration.

While negotiating a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia and hoping to “reset” relations with a former Cold War rival, the Obama Administration embarked on a conciliatory course last year which included a less powerful missile defense in Europe.

Turkey was hesitant to site part of the system while pursuing a “zero problems with neighbors” policy in the Middle East. It tried to establish itself as an interlocutor in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program between Tehran and the West but the nuclear fuel swap agreement it reached with Iran in May of last year was rejected by other NATO countries which felt that the Islamic Republic was merely bidding for time.

President Barack Obama is briefed on vacation in Massachusetts, August 19

With Libya’s rebels on the verge of ousting longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, those who favored President Barack Obama’s apparently lukewarm support for the NATO intervention may seek to vindicate his strategy of “leading from behind” but they would be missing a crucial point—that without a powerful American commitment, Libya’s civil war dragged on for months and exhausted the military capabilities of NATO partners in the process.

When the Libyan regime attempted to crush its version of the Arab spring with deadly force in February of this year, the Obama Administration was reluctant to endorse calls for a military intervention which emerged from Paris and London. It seemed as though France and the United Kingdom had to drag America kicking and screaming into participating in an intervention. Having disabled Gaddafi’s air defenses and enforced a no-fly zone, the United States subsequently expected their allies to take the lead.

Without the full force of American air power, Britain, France and other NATO countries managed to prevent further brutalities against civilians but failed to decide the struggle in the rebels’ favor until months after the intervention began.

Only after NATO extended its United Nations mandate to protect Libyan civilians and began coordinating strikes with anti-government forces could they break the gridlock and defeat loyalists on the road to Tripoli. An intensification of American aerial surveillance in and around the capital in particular was cited by NATO officials as a major factor in helping to tilt the balance. According to the Pentagon, the number of American air attacks nearly doubled during the last twelve days before rebels could enter the capital.

The battle for Tripoli came just in time for NATO as its mandate was due to expire next month. If the alliance had to vote on resuming military action, it’s quite possible that members as Germany, Italy and Turkey, which were skeptical of the intervention and had even called for a suspension of air strikes, would have prevented Britain and France from continuing under the NATO umbrella. Both countries’ military resources were drain by the effort. Paris announced that it had to withdraw its single aircraft carrier from the mission two weeks ago. Norway stopped flying sorties over Libya this month.

America may be overstretched with two wars in the Middle East and antiterrorism operations in Pakistan and Yemen while maintaining a permanent military presence in allied countries around the world, including Germany and South Korea. But the toll imposed on European defense forces by the intervention in Libya has been much heavier.

President Obama could have lifted that burden without making America seem to be in charge—which, considering Arab and European opposition to his predecessor’s unilateralism, would have been an unwelcome perception. Indeed, it appeared that in the end, he did, repudiating the notion that the United States could have played no more than a “supportive role” in the conflict as the Obama White House originally envisaged.

French Navy Rafale fighter aircraft, September 18, 2007 (Neil Bates)

For NATO, much depended on the outcome in Libya. If the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world couldn’t defeat one eccentric dictator and his relic of an army, what future was there for the organization? Although Muammar Gaddafi is now on the way out, NATO has few reasons to celebrate. It hardly has the capacity to mount a similar intervention soon.

After the United Nations authorized military action in Libya to protect anti-government protesters from a violent crackdown by the Gaddafi regime, Britain, France and the United States launched an immediate effort to disrupt its ability to target civilians. Air strikes and special forces operations during the next six months helped the country’s armed opposition headquartered in the eastern city of Benghazi advance on Tripoli where they claimed victory this week.

After a no-fly zone was effectively in place, the United States chose to play a supportive role in the NATO mission. After they had disabled virtually all of the Libyan air defenses in less than twenty-four hours and destroyed many of the country’s airfields during the initial offensive, the Americans expected NATO to take the lead which meant Britain and France—the two countries that had pushed for a military intervention despite America’s reluctance to be embroiled in yet another conflict in the Muslim world.

After two months, at a G8 summit in Deauville, France, the allies called on the United States for additional support. Although President Barack Obama insisted in London before the conference that there weren’t “a whole bunch of secret, super effective air assets in a warehouse somewhere” that could immediately be deployed, what was asked of the American were less than a dozen airplanes to provide close air support for rebel forces on the ground—a type of airplane which none of the other NATO countries had.

The United States were flying about a quarter of all air missions over Libya, including refueling and intelligence sorties, while unmanned drone aircraft struck a number of targets. American fighter jets weren’t particularly involved after the first days of the intervention, much to the chagrin of European allies.

The Americans, in turn, were reminded once again that they shoulder the defense burden in NATO as European countries rely on their overwhelmingly military superiority to underfund their own armed forces.

Former defense secretary Robert Gates criticized the military ineptitude of his allies before he resigned this summer, chastising them for running “short of munitions” a mere eleven weeks into the intervention, “requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.”

France announced that it had to withdraw its single aircraft carrier from operations off the coast of Libya two weeks ago. Norway stopped flying sorties over the country altogether earlier this month and many NATO countries, notably Germany and Turkey, didn’t participate at all.

Whereas the huge disparity between American and European contributions to NATO’s defense force has been historic, the stark and public division within its ranks over the Libyan intervention was quite unheard of.

Germany and Italy, two major Libyan trading partners, as well as Turkey, which has pursued a foreign policy that is more independent of the West in recent years, were skeptical of the effort. Germany even abstained from voting on the Security Council resolution that mandated military action in February. Its United Nations ambassador warned at the time that the West risked being dragged into a protracted conflict in Libya and better not expect “quick results with few casualties.” His predictions certainly bore out.

If Libya is a harbinger of things to come, NATO could become less coherent with member states deciding individually whether to participate in allied missions or not. Allowing nations to opt out of particular endeavors without even providing token support may be necessary to ensure the alliance’s relevance into the future as there is no longer an external enemy menacing all of the allies’ security and interests.

Another change could be NATO returning to protect Europe and Europe’s direct sphere of interest instead undertaking police missions around the world.

After the Balkans, Afghanistan was the alliance’s first true test of whether it could operate “out of area” and no one liked it. With few exceptions, the Europeans didn’t care to engage wholeheartedly while their limited mandates inhibited the necessary flexibility of American commanders on the ground. A more defined role for NATO, both in scope (“bombing for peace”) and geography (in and near Europe) seems likely, leaving operations farther away to individual members states or temporary coalitions of the willing as was the case in Côte d’Ivoire this year, where France single handedly restored order after a disputed presidential election, as well as in Iraq, where Britain and the United States led the invasion.

It’s not a terrible prospect for an alliance that has looked for relevance since the end of the Cold War. The very reason NATO was founded was “just in case” so maybe it shouldn’t be considered a setback for the organization to narrow its ambitions and wait for the next opportunity to prove itself useful.

A rebel fighter stands close to his vehicle in Ra's Lanuf, Libya, March 6, 2011 (AFP/Getty Images)

Updates are added to the top of this post.

(AUG 22) Anti-government combatants closed in on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s stronghold in Tripoli on Sunday night and continued their advance into the heart of the capital on Monday. After six months of civil war, during which NATO, aiming to protect civilians from the brutalities of the Gaddafi regime, helped the rebels with bombardments of loyalist forces, the demise of North Africa’s last dictatorship seemed imminent.

Two of Gaddafi’s sons were reported captured by the rebels’ National Transitional Council while the leader himself twice urged supporters to fight his antagonists over radio on Sunday. When anti-government forces entered the capital however, they were largely welcomed by protesters and Tripoli residents who had suffered several months of depravation and shortages as the regime’s lifeline, Libya’s oil industry, had been shut off by sanctions and disturbances in the major oil ports of Brega and Ra’s Lanuf.

The rebels’ interim government in the eastern city of Benghazi lacked coherent leadership and there wasn’t much coordination between anti-government fighters in different parts of the country. After more than four decades of authoritarian rule, Libya seemed ill prepared for the sort of inclusive democracy that the National Transitional Council claimed it intended to establish.

(AUG 19) Libyan rebels captured the town of Az Zawiyah west of Tripoli this week, increasing pressure on Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his regime to relinquish power by cutting off their escape route to neighboring Tunisia.

While NATO warplanes continued to bombard the capital by night, an oil refinery immediately south of Tripoli was also captured by rebels, making it more difficult for loyalist armor to continue to operate.

(AUG 8) French defense minister Gérard Longuet told a regional newspaper on Thursday that his country would withdraw the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier from operations off the coast of Libya for maintenance.

The carrier was due to return to the port of Toulon mid August. French fighter planes were expected to continue to operate from NATO bases in Sicily, Italy and from the Greek island of Crete. French surveillance aircraft participating in the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya would continue to depart from mainland France.

(AUG 3) Norway withdrew its four F-16 fighter jets from the military intervention in Libya on Monday. The Scandinavian planes flew nearly six hundred missions, clocking up around two thousand hours of flight time during their four months of engagement.

Norway originally had six F-16s involved in the bombing campaign. It reduced the number of four late in June. Ten Norwegian staff officers were to remain involved in NATO operations.

(AUG 2) Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Tripoli warned on Monday that it would continue its war against anti-government forces whether NATO seized its bombing campaign or not. “No one should think that after all the sacrifices we have made and the martyrdom of our sons, brothers and friends, we will stop fighting. Forget it,” said the Libyan leader’s son Saif al-Islam on state television.

A United Nations peace envoy was dispatched to Libya last week. Gaddafi’s government previously said that it would only agree to talks if Arab and Western nations stopped their bombing raids. Monday’s announcement appeared to leave little room for diplomacy.

Despite slow rebel progress on the ground, Britain and France pledged to continue the intervention for as long as needed. Paris prepared to place nearly $260 million at the disposal of the rebels’ interim government in Benghazi after unfreezing Libyan assets in France.

(JUL 16) The United Kingdom on Friday announced that it would deploy four additional Tornado warplanes to support the NATO mission in Libya in addition to the twelve British aircraft that were already participating in the operation.

In Istanbul the following day, Arab and Western nations supporting the Libyan intervention recognized the rebels’ transitional council as the country’s “legitimate governing authority,” a move that should allow billions in Libyan assets frozen abroad to be released to the anti-government forces.

(JUL 8) Libyan rebels advanced on two fronts this week against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces which remained in control of two cities west of the capital according to NATO.

The rebels from a base in Misurata, more than two hundred kilometers east of Tripoli, reportedly battled loyalists for control of Zliten to the west which has a population of roughly a hundred thousand. Berber insurgents in the Nafusa Mountains claimed victory near a desert village some ninety kilometers south of Tripoli following a fierce battle that involved scores if not hundreds of fighters on both sides. Rebels told the BBC that NATO had bombed heavy weaponry in the area prior to their move.

Berber culture and language were long suppressed by the Gaddafi regime. It was unknown whether there had been coordination between the Nafusa rebels and their counterparts headquartered in Benghazi.

(JUN 29) Le Figaro revealed on Wednesday that France was providing weapons to rebels in Libya’s western mountains in an effort to help them advance on Gaddafi’s stronghold in the capital of Tripoli.

Citing anonymous sources, the French newspaper reported that the country had parachuted “large amounts” of weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers, into the rebel area. The decision to send arms without NATO consent was made “because there was no other way to proceed,” according to a source quoted by Le Figaro.

Rebels active in the mountains southwest of the capital had reached the town of Bi’r al Ghanam on Sunday where they were fighting loyalist forces for control.

Red Square in Moscow, Russia, December 4, 2010 (Darius Kuzmickas)

Whenever Moscow asserts itself forcefully these days, Cold War paradigms and old stereotypes are usually quickly resurrected to interpret Russian behavior even if, in today’s multipolar environment, its motives are probably no different from other greater powers. No matter Western fears of a “resurgent” Russia seeking to project power abroad, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country has pursued a fairly rational foreign policy that is grounded in self preservation.

NATO’s expansion into Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War continues to shape Moscow’s strategic thinking today. While Russia was attempting recover from its unexpected retrogression, it believed that the West had pledged not to take advantage of its weakness and annex its European buffer zone. When the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined the Atlantic alliance just before the turn of the century nevertheless, it naturally compelled the Kremlin to look after its interests more carefully.

If it was ever under the impression that the end of the Cold War had heralded a new era of honest and peaceful cooperation among civilized nations, by the beginning of the 2000s, Moscow realized perfectly well that in the West, it continued to be regarded as a potential adversary. That thinking necessitated a preemptive containment strategy that robbed Russia of its ability to seriously menace Western Europe with the inclusion of former Soviet satellite states in NATO and the EU.

Twice during the twentieth century had Russia been invaded from the west. Stalin’s sovietization of Eastern Europe after World War II was largely a defensive policy that enabled him to rebuild Russia while anticipating renewed German aggression. (West Germany’s NATO membership was similarly aimed at preventing the nation from resurging as a continental power.) Surrounded by allies and puppet regimes, Russia was arguably safe until nuclear weapons upset the familiar balance of power.

Whereas a limited use of nuclear weapons was seriously considered during the early days of the Cold War, nowadays, they are deemed a last resort at best. The specter of atomic war has almost disappeared so the need for traditional strategic depth is back.

Wikistrat‘s Thomas Barnett reminds readers of Russian fears of encirclement in his latest World Politics Review column. After shrugging off its empire in 1991, Russia was denied a “sense of belonging,” Barnett notes, when Europe and the United States refused to consider Russia’s entry to NATO. Instead, America moved in militarily from the south as part of its global War on Terror while China progressively encroached, in an economic sense, on Russia’s “near abroad” in Central Asia and the Far East.

Russia has been remarkably reluctant to counter these infringements. Although nearly all former Warsaw Pact members belong to the European Union now, it has made only halfhearted attempts to regain a semblance of hegemony on its western border. Old Eastern Bloc nations may still worry about Russian antagonism, especially if Germany, which is so dependent on Russian gas imports, won’t truly protect them in the EU (which is why they expect security from the United States in NATO)—the likelihood of Moscow deploying force against Poland, Lithuania or even the Ukraine is close to zero.

In other parts of its former empire, too, Russia is far from belligerent. Although vying for influence there with nearby greater powers, Russia has refrained from policing Central Asia in Soviet style despite the alluring natural resources that the region possesses. When Kyrgyzstan asked for a Russian troop presence last year to quell political unrest, the Kremlin balked at the request. It had no desire to become entangled in the internal power struggles of its former client state.

Russian cultural and political influence pervades especially in the northernmost of former socialist republics in Central Asia but Chinese, Iranian and Turkish attempts at fostering stable relations in the area could set the stage for a greater power confrontation, one from which Moscow stands nothing to gain.

Russian governors in the Far East occasionally raise the specter of the “yellow menace” and talk of the danger posed to their underpopulated provinces by unregulated Chinese labor migrants but as Dmitry Gorenburg pointed out here last year, “this kind of talk rarely emanates from Moscow and certainly does not affect troop positioning.”

Indeed, “it is stunning how little trouble Moscow has fomented” since the demise of the Soviet Union, writes Barnett, “all while engineering arguably the greatest military demobilization in human history, going from more than two hundred army divisions to less than one hundred brigades.”

Russia plans no wars with either Europe or “rising” China [and] welcomes the rising influence of Turkey and India to its south. Yes, Russia is effectively shut out of Europe for the first time in three centuries but it seeks no territorial conquest, only soft domination of the sort America pursues throughout much of the planet. All that, with the only cost being the admittedly bloody dissolution of the Balkans and some nasty guerrilla warfare in the Caucasus.

Russia will seek to defend what it perceives to be its interests, in the Arctic for instance, which holds the promise of attaining access to vast untapped hydrocarbon resources which its economy so relies upon. And it will do so with regular salvos of nationalist bombast that the Russian electorate is susceptible to. Russian bomber planes and submarines will occasionally penetrate European airspace and harass their allied counterparts but militarily, the “petro dinosaur” is largely irrelevant except for its nuclear weapons arsenal—which it has been willing to reduce in negotiations with the Americans.

It would seem that reports of Russia’s resurgence have been greatly exaggerated.